1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medical information system. More particularly, the invention relates to a system for assisting preparation of medical-image reading reports, for use in medical-image diagnosis workstations and image-diagnosis report preparation systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
To date, systems such as a medical-image diagnosis apparatus, a medical-image archiving apparatus, a medical-image diagnosis workstation, and an image-diagnosis report preparation system have been used. In such systems, reports are prepared as is known in the art. Each report consists of several medical images (key images) and text-data items (character strings), each associated with one medical image (see, for example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2005-301453).
Any user of the system can prepare and archive a report that consists of, as described above, text items and medical images associated with the respective images. However, it takes the user much time and labor to prepare a report, because he or she needs to input text-data items and associate each text-data item with the corresponding medical image.
More specifically, the user must i) input a text-data item even if he or she has input it before, ii) paste a key image again, if necessary, to the text-data item thus input, and iii) correct, if necessary, the text-data item to which the image has been pasted. Inputting the text-data item again lowers the efficiency of preparing the report. Pasting the key image again to the text-data item reduces the efficiency of reading images. Correcting the text-data items having a key image pasted to it requires complicated manual work.